Chien-Ming Wang

Chien-Ming Wang won 19 games in back-to-back seasons for the New York Yankees, anchored the post-dynasty rotation with a sinker that hitters could barely lift off the infield dirt, and then watched a Cy Young-caliber peak get wiped out by a foot injury he suffered running the bases in Houston -- something an American League pitcher almost never has to do. That's the whole tragedy in one sentence.

Signed Out of Taiwan, Buried in the Minors

The Yankees signed Wang as an international free agent in May 2000, out of Tainan City, Taiwan, for a reported bonus north of a million dollars (real money at the time for a pitcher nobody outside a handful of scouts had heard of). He spent five years working through the system before making his debut on April 30, 2005, at Yankee Stadium against Toronto -- seven innings, two runs, no fuss. Nobody knew it yet, but the Yankees had just found the arm that would anchor their rotation for the next three years.

Two 19-Win Seasons and a Sinker That Broke Bats

Wang's whole game was one pitch: a heavy, low-90s sinker that hitters pounded into the ground instead of over the fence. In 2006, he threw 218 innings, struck out only 76 hitters (an absurdly low number for a 19-game winner), and led the American League in ground ball rate at 62.8 percent. He tied Johan Santana for the major league lead in wins that year at 19-6 and finished second to Santana in the Cy Young vote -- still one of the best finishes by an Asian-born pitcher in the award's history.

He came back in 2007 and won 19 games again. Josh Beckett had 20 that year and technically owned the AL crown, so Wang wasn't a repeat leader -- just close enough that it barely matters. Back-to-back 19-win seasons from a guy who rarely broke the mid-90s on the radar gun and got outs almost entirely off movement. Rotation-mates like Mike Mussina and Andy Pettitte got more attention. Wang just quietly won more games than either of them those two years.

The Play That Changed Everything

On June 15, 2008, at Minute Maid Park in Houston, Wang scored on a Derek Jeter single and rounded third the way pitchers occasionally have to in interleague games. He came up lame. The diagnosis was a torn Lisfranc ligament and a partial tear of the peroneus longus tendon in his right foot -- the kind of injury an AL pitcher almost never suffers, because AL pitchers almost never run. He was 8-2 with a 4.07 ERA at the time, and the Yankees were 12-3 in his 15 starts that 2008 season. His year ended right there on the basepaths, in a ballpark he had no real business getting hurt in.

2009, and a Ring He Barely Got to Enjoy

The comeback never worked. Wang opened 2009 getting shelled in his first three starts and finished the year 1-6 with a 9.64 ERA -- the worst mark in franchise history for a pitcher with at least 40 innings. A torn shoulder capsule needed surgery in late July, and that was that. The Yankees won the World Series that October without him contributing much of anything on the mound. Wang still walked in the Canyon of Heroes parade that fall, by most accounts wishing he'd actually been healthy enough to enjoy it (fair). The Yankees didn't bring him back for 2010.

Life After the Bronx

Wang kept chasing it -- Washington, Toronto, Kansas City, one comeback attempt after another, never again touching the pitcher he'd been in 2006 and 2007. He got back to the majors with the Nationals in 2011 and beat the Cubs at Wrigley for his first win in two years (six innings, one hit, on a sinker everyone assumed was gone for good). His last MLB appearance came with Kansas City in 2016. He went home to Taiwan afterward, coached Chinese Taipei's pitching staff at the 2019 WBSC Premier12 and the 2023 World Baseball Classic, and in January 2024 got voted into the Taiwan Baseball Hall of Fame with better than 92 percent of the vote -- the record holder for wins in a season by an Asian-born pitcher, and he did it twice.

Wang never got the Hall of Fame case some of his rotation-mates built. He got two of the best age-26 and age-27 seasons any Yankees starter has had this century, and then a foot injury on a play nobody would think twice about if it happened to literally anyone else on the roster. Sometimes that's the whole story.